First, the songs get played on Beats 1’s primetime morning slots from 9am to noon PST, and start to appear on Apple’s Pandora-style iTunes Radio stations. Then artists drop them on the Apple Music Connect feed, which lets full songs be reshared on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. All of these channels are open to anyone on web or mobile without a $10 a month Apple Music subscription.
Apple’s editors can then push them into Apple Music’s For You or New tabs to score them even more plays from subscribers. Eventually in many cases, the singles get pulled back behind the paywall so they’re only available to subscribers to earn artists royalties, while the videos stay available for free.
What’s in it for the artist? To start, massive exposure. This is the modern Ed Sullivan Show, the Rolling Stone cover, the MTV Total Request Live. Smart musicians know that fame equals concert ticket and merch sales, sponsorships and licensing deals.
But rather than leave that relationship vague, this strategy gets people from around the web to follow artists on Apple Music Connect.
